


you're mine as yet

by hamletcat



Series: a catalog of interactions. [2]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-20 16:34:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30007758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamletcat/pseuds/hamletcat
Summary: in which lan fan is left alone.
Relationships: Fu & Lan Fan, Fu & Lan Fan & Ling Yao, Lan Fan & Dr. Knox, Lan Fan & Riza Hawkeye, Lan Fan & Roy Mustang, Lan Fan/Ling Yao, Mei Chan | May Chang & Lan Fan, Mei Chan | May Chang & Ling Yao
Series: a catalog of interactions. [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2207412
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	you're mine as yet

**Author's Note:**

> this is an extended epilogue for 'a catalog of interactions between an emperor and his most loyal servant'! it might be able to stand alone as a one-shot but i definitely recommend reading that first. <3

Lan Fan does not resent Mei.

Resenting her wouldn't do anyone good; it would only sow unnecessary seeds of irritation.

Besides, she loves the little princess. She's spunky and loud, and she talks enough to fill up Lan Fan's thoughts with nonsensical ideas and simple small talk. She doesn't expect much from Lan Fan. 

However, Lan Fan can't help but feel hurt- or, rather, not hurt, but pained- not pained, just aching strangely, an acute emptiness in the space between her ribs- when she turns to say something to Ling, and instead finds Mei's face looking back at her.

It's strange, the both of them, learning how to exist as a duo. Mei is used to being alone with Xiao Mei; even as the princess approaches twenty, Lan Fan is constantly having to track her down, expelling energy to track her qi and making sure she stays nearby. 

Lan Fan, on the other hand, grew accustomed to seeing Ling beside her in their twenty-one years together; finding his red-gold presence buzzing in the air and uniting with him with relative ease. She wouldn't have to say a word for him to reach for her, reassuring her that he was still by her side; she didn't have to speak for him to look at her, acknowledging her plan, which he could always sense and predict so easily, with a nod or a subtle shake of his head. Lan Fan finds that Mei doesn't understand the nonverbal cues she and Ling spent years fine-tuning- who could, when the signals were so particular and small? 

She can't be mad at Mei for being unable to understand, but she gets frustrated all the same.

It's easier, they discover after four years of service to Mei, for Lan Fan to be a bodyguard in title only; she keeps her weapons, on her, of course, and her uniform, but they both know perfectly well that Mei is capable of defending herself. Besides, no one's putting plans in motion to assassinate Mei these days- there's no point. She lost her chance to succeed her father years ago, and she no longer has favor with her brother the Emperor. She's impossible to track down, anyway, flitting back and forth from Amestris to Ishval to Xing. 

Lan Fan becomes a confidant- more of a lady-in-waiting than a guard, but it works for her. If her master must change, she'd rather her occupation change with it. Trying to do her job effectively with an unfamiliar partner, each used to operating on her own; they were both miserable.

Lan Fan doesn't mind being a friend to Mei. She's a sweet girl, and a pleasant traveling companion. However, she'd be lying if she said she didn't miss having a purpose. 

Ling never needed her, necessarily; he was as strong as she is, if not stronger, but he let her take care of him. Let her work by his side. Mei is too stubborn for such frivolity. Lan Fan respects her effective simplicity, but at the same time, she wants to-she was born to- serve. It's in her blood. It feels wrong to walk by Mei's side rather than behind her at a distance.

She finds contentment in Ishval, where her arms ache and burn in the desert sun. She works by Scar's side; she learns how to lay bricks, to carve limestone. There is purpose in the physical, in bare feet in the sand and silent work beside people that are not quite strangers, but not quite friends. She eats lunch amidst charred ruins of ancient buildings and does not wince when the metal plate that connects her automail to her shoulder begins to singe her skin. Her sore arms come as a relief at the end of the day; she tires herself out so she doesn't have to spend hours staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep. It's the worst at night, after all. Listening to Mei's steady breathing across the room; wishing she were someone else.

She remembers Ishval with Ling, staying up late in their little tent while Mei, only twelve then, slept soundly on her pallet, close to the floor. They sat cross-legged, side by side on Ling's cot. They dressed each other's wounds, still fresh from the Promised Day; they wept from pain and from overwhelm of emotion, taking comfort in one another. 

Ling always made a point to hold her metal hand when he got the chance.

Lan Fan wishes- she wants; she wants something that she doesn't understand. When she thinks about it, she doesn't know specifically.

She wants to be a different person. She wishes she'd been more brave. She wishes she'd let him help her like he always wanted; wishes she hadn't pushed him away when he reached out to comb his fingers through her hair. 

She wishes she could still feel his qi, infused into the ground of the land he once walked on. Ishvalan sands do not remember him; Amestrian sidewalks hold no memories; not even the palace in Xing keeps hold of any part of him. 

Sometimes, she reaches for him without thinking. Panics when he's nowhere to be found. He no longer possesses the largest energetic mass in Xing. He's just gone. There is nothing left of him in the places where he willingly gave his heart up; his homeland, which consumed his being, didn't grip him tight enough.

She supposes that there are fragments of him in Mei. In herself. Mei smiles as he did, wide and unhesitant. Lan Fan wraps her bandages the way he used to, and makes ramen the way he always liked it. She catches glimpses of him on streets she doesn't recognize, in flashes of yellow and long dark hair turning corners, and she almost calls his name until the realization settles over her. He was taken from her too soon, and his smell has been washed off her clothes, her hands; fresh, biting citrus and the incense he would burn on his shrine to Fu. 

He ran out of incense a few weeks before he took to bed for the last time. He never restocked it. Lan Fan doesn't even know what it was- sandalwood, maybe, or patchouli. There's no way she'd have room in her bags to carry it now, anyway; she just thinks it might be nice to have him with her, in one way or another. 

She had no claim to any of his personal things. Mei took a few of his belongings- his rings, a few books, a necklace she bought for him in Drachma- and offered Lan Fan a few(an old jacket, stained at the sleeves; the sword he once wore on his back, sheathed in black leather; the glasses he never wore). She didn't want any of it. 

He wasn't hers; why should any of his belongings stay with her?

Mei looked at her like she wanted to say something. She didn't. Lan Fan didn't pry.

If he loved her, she doesn't want to know. She doesn't want to know if he loved her when they were ten, or sixteen, or twenty. If he ever stopped. She doesn't ask Mei how he felt; it feels juvenile, asking whether he had some sort of crush on her. 

She will remember him as a good friend. Her first friend, and best; the nearest to her heart by magnitudes. That is enough. It will be. Must be. Her love for him changes nothing, the weeks she spent sleepless for his sake meaningless now that he's gone.

The looks do not change, even as the time without him wears on some ten, twelve years; lingering gazes follow Lan Fan everywhere she goes, regardless of the stable facade she employs.

It takes everything out of her to visit Xing. Everyone knows her name; those who do not, they know her face, her position, her personal relationships to the late Emperor and Emperor's favored sister. Rumors about Ling's life still spread, disrespectful as it is; they say he never married because he was devoted to his servant, imply that the nature of his relationship to Lan Fan was anything but professional. Poisonous tongues lash at Lan Fan's back, claiming she and Mei contaminated Ling's mind with their radical ideas, fouled his noble conscience and bent him to their wills.

Those who don't believe Lan Fan corrupted him believe she can't exist without him. They look at her pitifully as she passes, their grief more obvious than her own; they whisper sadly about how her shoulders hunch more, her expressions less proud than they were in her youth. They say she lost everything. They make sure she knows how little she has left.

She returns their pity with sullen glances, dead eyes and an unamused twist of her mouth. She knows how much she's lost. She doesn't need them to tell her that she has nothing to hold, that the people she loved best slipped through her fingers like grains of sand; that her purpose has evaporated like water and there are only faint traces of light left in her eyes. They say her head and heart operate separately; that she is ruled by her brain, now, because she has lost her heart.

When she hears whispers of scandal and sadness, Mei puts her arm over Lan Fan's shoulder and glares daggers at the offending speaker as they walk away quickly. Lan Fan cannot meet their eyes, nor Mei's, and that fact fills her with shame; she was taught to defend herself from anything but words. 

As she nears thirty, Lan Fan realizes she should have learned the art of the snappy comeback, which Mei has spent all her life developing. It's not in her nature, but her inability to react to anything offensive with something besides physical violence leaves her empty-handed before the noblewomen who still feel the sting of Emperor Yao's rejections.

It doesn't take long for Mei to start avoiding Xing. The new Emperor, Hua, makes good on his promises to Ling- he makes sure that every clan is treated fairly, and Lan Fan hears rumors that he is working to dissolve the 50-clan system- but he's evidently unable to control his court. He's a kind man but not a commanding one, and serves the people without guiding them toward goodness. Mei and Lan Fan respect him but don't like him so well as Ling- how could they love anyone more?- and, as with all things these days, it hurts them to enter a palace that is close to clean of Ling's influence. 

They ricochet from Ishval to Amestris. Mei keeps their visits to Xing short and makes sure they stay in Chang domain for the majority of the time, where the people are as blunt and stubborn as Mei, but treat Lan Fan with care; Lan Fan takes solace in the fact that they don't know a thing about her relationship with Ling. News doesn't travel quickly in Xing, and no one thinks to spread harmful rumors to the practically-unlivable mountains.

She comes to like Amestris much more. No one recognizes her there; they see a tourist from Xing and nothing beyond. There is nothing beneath the surface, no ulterior motive. In Amestris, her travels do not make her evasive. She is not running from her problems. She is visiting friends; she is sightseeing with her loud companion and a terrible little panda.

She is not running from her problems, she reminds herself, time and time again.

She and Mei stay with Dr. Knox in Central City. Mei leaves for long days at the library or the archives in the government headquarters, which are off-limits to the public(Mei proudly manipulates General Mustang into letting her in). 

Usually, Lan Fan tags along; sometimes, however, she stays at Knox's. The first time she visited Amestris after Ling's passing, the old doctor could only pat her on the shoulder and nod wordlessly. The silence gradually becomes more comfortable. They gravitate around each other in the empty house. Sometimes, they sit in separate rooms but feel reassured by the other's presence; silent and consistent. 

When they feel particularly alone- when they've missed each other but are too proud to say anything about it- they do puzzles at the kitchen table, only speaking to tell each other what piece they're looking for.

On the occasion that Lan Fan finds herself out in the city independent of Mei, she visits Brigadier General Hawkeye at her apartment. They sit together on her balcony and exchange pleasantries; they don't dig beneath the surface. Hawkeye doesn't ask intrusive questions- she sees in Lan Fan a reflection of herself, and treats her as she would her own child. 

Together, they watch the sun go down over the tops of Hawkeye's window boxes, overflowing with pink and purple peonies. Black Hayate settles at Lan Fan's feet and only budges to put black-and-white paws on her thigh, eyes bright and welcoming, much like Hawkeye's.

It's a peaceful existence. It's routine. Lan Fan has plenty of- too much- time to think.

She thinks about Greed. She wonders if her hate is misdirected. The homonculus was immortal, but there's no way he could have known the effects of his untimely ripping from Ling's body. He had never taken the form of another person before, and Lan Fan knows he and Ling got on like a house on fire; she knows well how hard Ling fought to keep him.

The autopsy, Lan Fan learns a few months after Ling's death, showed that his vital organs had begun to crumble. The doctors said that they had impossibly become a fragile carbon, were turning to dust as he lived. They said that, for Ling, the small action of lifting his hand was the equivalent of a mortar and pestle pressing hard on his heart and lungs and turning with the intent to break, to shatter. 

Greed destroyed him from the inside out- but when he called for her that day, he had sounded so desperate. So afraid, and yet so confident in his decision. He knew he was going to die and still acted as he did.

As a rule, Lan Fan did not follow Greed's orders, but in that moment- that day- they had worked for a common goal. They both wanted to protect Ling. They both failed. 

Ultimately, she failed him, just as Greed did.

Lan Fan overthinks it. Forgiving Greed is at the back of her mind for fifteen years following Ling's passing; it sits patiently through too-quiet nights and the longest train rides, and she keeps it locked away so she won't have to look at it. It's too ugly. She sees in black-and-white; in her mind, Greed can either be all good or all bad. She chooses to think of him as evil; it's easier than acknowledging that he was as complex as she is, as Ling was, as Fu. He took Ling from her, so he must be bad.

Mei dismisses Lan Fan from service when she turns thirty-eight. It's a mutual choice. Mei watches Lan Fan grow more tired as the years pass, watches as the circles beneath her eyes get darker and as the lightness of her spirit begins to dim. 

When Mei asks her if she wants to keep at this job, Lan Fan cries from the weight of being simultaneously understood and defeated.

Lan Fan leaves service with a small fortune, bestowed upon her by Mei. 

She goes back to the Yao territory in Xing, which she was afraid to face her entire adult life. She couldn't look Ling's mother in the face after everything; couldn't face the streets she knew so well without her best friend by her side.

And yet, she is surprised to find that it feels entirely normal to return. Somehow, it feels right to go back to her childhood home- still standing empty. Nothing stolen; nothing moved. Just as it was when she saw it last.

Before she goes home, she visits Ling's mother in her large house. She lives alone. All of her children have begun new lives; she survives on the riches remaining from Ling's success as Emperor, his need to continue supporting his mother carrying her through her old age. 

Lan Fan fears the elderly woman will scorn her for her failure; instead, she is welcomed with open arms. 

"They tried to move your things out of that old house," says Ling's mother hoarsely, placing a wrinkled hand atop Lan Fan's. "I told them you'd be back. I knew you had to come home."

Lan Fan smiles weakly. "Thank you for trusting me." To protect your son. To return.

"I knew you could never fail me."

That is all Lan Fan needs to hear. The Yao matriarch watched Lan Fan grow up next to Ling; loved her as dearly as she loved her own son; trusted Fu to be a guiding hand in Ling's life. How could Lan Fan ever expect she wouldn't be forgiven?

She finds it in herself to begin a new chapter. 

She spends a month clearing out the first floor of her grandfather's house, rearranging and altering until she's satisfied. She works alone. She doesn't trust anyone else with the job, touching Fu's furniture and unearthing remnants of her youth with Ling. 

There are days when she finds- old letters or drawings- a ponytail holder that Ling left behind- Fu's uniform shirt and pants that she hasn't seen in years- and is unable to go on working for a while. She sinks and sticks and feels unavoidably alone.

And then someone knocks on the door with the screws she asked for, or something to heat up for dinner. She dries her tears and lets them explore that bottom floor, filled to the brim with memories and sparse furniture and Lan Fan's sweat and tears. 

They tell her this will be a fine place to educate; that there's no one they'd rather let their kids learn from. Lan Fan's grin is wan, but it pops up regardless.

In July of 1937, Lan Fan opens a martial arts academy. She teaches only the children of the Yao clan, at first; as time goes on, more people learn of it. By 1942, she's teaching Changs, Zous, Xues, Songs; anyone interested in learning comes to the best of the best. She's gruff and strict as her grandfather, but shows pride in her students all the same. 

When she walks through the house while the kids take their lunch break, she hears them talking about her excitedly- "Teacher smiled at me today," she hears one girl exclaim. Her friends beg her to demonstrate what she did, and she does so willingly. Lan Fan passes through and taps the little girl's shoulder.

"Softer feet, Yun," she says, watching as Yun quickly corrects her stance. "Very good. Now eat."

The Elrics and their wives visit and help with classes; General Hawkeye lets the older students shoot clay pigeons with her pistols, and Mustang amazes the children with his flame alchemy. 

Dr. Knox, aging faster than Lan Fan would like, visits in 1941 and oversees one class, sitting on a chair in the corner so his weak legs don't shake too much; Lan Fan doesn't miss the look of pride on his face as he watches her appraise and correct the kids' forms.

"You look happy," says Mei one day, her face more wrinkled than it once was. Her eyes still glimmer with intelligence and mischief.

Lan Fan looks away and does not answer. 

Mei already knows she's happy, the happiest she's been in many years. She feels her grandfather in her sharpest reprimands. 

She keeps a photo of Ling in the entryway, smiling for the camera. When she passes it, she presses fingers to her lips and grazes them over the top of the frame.

Lan Fan does not know if she will ever heal completely. She does not know if she will forgive Greed, but she gets closer every day.

She knows she loves to teach. She knows she misses Ling; he lives in the base of her spine and in the creaking floorboards of this old house, his airy laugh filling archways. 

She cannot remember the inflections of his voice or the complexities of his speech, but she remembers how he laughed. 

Her students cackle freely when they mess up an action and land sprawlingly; Lan Fan finds him in long hair and too-loose motions. She tells the students that move as fluidly as he did that they fight like the Emperor Yao and watches their chests swell with pride, only to deflate when she says their posture is imperfect, smiling teasingly as they quickly fix their mistakes, becoming flustered as quickly as they were gratified. She feels Ling's quiet chuckle over her shoulder in those moments, feels him admiring her newfound confidence and steady footing.

When she passes the statue of Ling in the desert, tall and dignified, on the occasional trip to Amestris, she does not cry. She lightly presses her forehead to the window. "I miss you," she says, so quietly that no one else could possibly hear. "I'm going to be alright."

The expression on his face says he knows she will. That he was expecting it all this time. He knows her better than anyone, after all.


End file.
